There were two of these s-ohbsgam. The first one liked being bad. The other one, a man with a wife and a baby, knew he had done wrong, and he killed himself. The first one would have gotten away, but the wife of his dead friend talked to the judge and so the Apache-like Man went to prison.

After he got out, he started killing people again. One of the people he wanted to kill was the woman who had helped put him in prison, and he came looking for her. When he found her all alone, he thought he had won, but the woman had a friend, an old Indian woman who knew how to sing for power. She sang a powerful song, a war chant. Even though the other woman was Milgahn, the old woman’s song gave her enough courage to fight back. When the man came too close she burned his face with hot fat, and from then on the Bad Man was blind, and he is blind to this day, even though he’s dead.

That, nawoj, my friend, is the story of the Woman Who Fought the S-Ohbsgam.

Highway 86, West of Tucson, Arizona

Saturday, June 6, 2009, 11:30 p.m.

73º Fahrenheit

The story ended. For a long time after that, Lani and Gabe were silent. She didn’t want to say anything more, but she wondered how much of all that the child understood. He understood it all.

“Is that the man I saw this morning by your mother’s swimming pool?” he asked. “The one who was sitting there talking to your mother-the one you couldn’t see.”

“Yes,” Lani said quietly. “I think so.”

“But why?” Gabe asked. “If he’s dead, why would he come back?”

“I don’t know,” Lani said. “That’s what we have to find out.”

Tucson, Arizona

Saturday, June 6, 2009, 11:00 p.m.

73º Fahrenheit

Pima County Detective Brian Fellows hung up the phone and returned to the bedroom. When he switched on the light in the closet, his wife, Kath, groaned and pulled a pillow over her face.

“What time is it?” she grumbled.

“Eleven. Go back to sleep.”

“What’s going on?”

“A quadruple homicide out on the reservation.”

“Great,” she said. “Why is it, when it comes to homicides on the reservation, you’re always William Forsythe’s favorite go-to guy?”

“You know why as well as I do,” Brian answered.

In terms of political correctness, Sheriff William Forsythe was only one very small step beyond the outdated notion that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” The Tohono O’odham Nation took up a large segment of Pima County’s landmass, but since whatever crime happened there often had to do with Indians or illegal aliens, Sheriff Forsythe was usually only too happy to relegate it to the low end of the priority scale. Sending Brian to work those remote cases was Forsythe’s way of continuing to punish Fellows for his long and close association with Forsythe’s immediate predecessor, Brandon Walker.

No doubt Sheriff Forsythe thought sending Brian to the reservation would tick Detective Fellows off, but like Br’er Rabbit, Brian didn’t mind being thrown into the reservation briar patch. As for Sheriff Forsythe? The guy was a jerk. Brian hoped that someday Forsythe would no longer be an issue. Either the people of Pima County would come to their senses and elect someone else, or Brian would put in his twenty years and then be gone. At this point there was no way to tell which would come first.

Kath sat up in bed and propped the pillow behind her. “Who’s going with you?” she asked.

“Just me,” he said.

“For a homicide with four victims?” she asked. “What is it, some kind of drug war?”

“Maybe,” Brian said, pulling on his shoes. “Dispatch said the victims are two Indians and two Anglos. It was called in by one of your Shadow Wolves guys. Pardee, I think the name is.”

When Kath and Brian met, he had been a lowly deputy with the sheriff’s department while she was a full-fledged Border Patrol officer. For a time after their marriage, they had both enjoyed being out in the field in their respective departments, comparing notes and chasing bad guys, but after the birth of their twins, Amy and Annie, things had changed.

With two little girls counting on them, they no longer thought it such a good idea to have both of them putting themselves in harm’s way on a daily basis. When a spot had opened up in Personnel, Kath had taken off her Kevlar vest, turned in the keys to her patrol car, and chained herself to a desk and a computer.

“With both Anglo and Indian victims, that’ll be a jurisdictional nightmare,” Kath mused.

“You’ve got that right,” Brian agreed.

“Where did it happen?”

“South of Topawa,” he said. “On the way to Vamori.”

“I guess that means you won’t be home for Sunday school and church tomorrow.”

He leaned down to kiss her good-bye. “Probably,” he said.

“All right then,” she said. “If you see Dan Pardee and his wonder dog, Bozo, tell them hello.”

“Bozo? As in the clown?”

“From what I’ve heard, Bozo is anything but funny. Dan was out on patrol and a guy tried to bean him with a rock. Bozo took exception and would have torn the guy limb from limb if Dan hadn’t stopped him. In other words, no fast moves around Bozo.”

“Right,” Brian said. “I’ll do my damnedest not to piss off the dog.”

“Take care,” Kath told him.

Nodding, Brian pocketed his wallet, his badge, and keys. On his way down the hall he popped into the girls’ room and laid a kiss on each of their foreheads. One of Brian Fellows’s rules for living decreed that you had to kiss the people you loved every time you went to work, because one of those times you might not be coming back.

Only after his daughters’ kisses had been properly bestowed did Brian Fellows head out of the house. He took off his Husband and Daddy hats and put on the ones marked Murder and Mayhem. That’s what you had to do in order to do the job-you compartmentalized.

What was work was work. What was home was home, and never the twain should meet.

Komelik, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Saturday, June 6, 2009, 10:45 p.m.

67º Fahrenheit

As Dan carried Angie back toward the Expedition, he could feel her body relaxing. Gradually his jacket warmed her, and her trembling ceased. By the time they got to his vehicle she was dead weight in his arms and sound asleep. There was no question about giving her something to eat or drink. Instead he stretched her out in the backseat. For several long minutes after putting her down, he sat next to her just listening to her breathe. He was glad she was sleeping. It was better for everyone concerned, but most especially for Angie herself, if she didn’t have to see or remember what came next.

Dan had already called for assistance before he’d gone looking for the girl. He had no idea how much time had passed since then, but so far there was no sign of backup, and there was no way to tell how much longer it would take for other units to respond. Once they did, Dan understood that the crime scene would be disrupted. Unlike Dan and his fellow Shadow Wolves, the other officers would be far more accustomed to dealing with pavement and sidewalks than they were with dirt. He doubted that any of them would be capable of Shadow Wolves-type tracking.

Dan may have been the one who found the victims, but he understood that solving this horrific multiple murder was none of his official business. Still, he wanted to know more-wanted to know who had done these terrible things and why. He could have just sat there and waited, listening to Angie breathe, but he didn’t. Slipping Angie’s tiny shoes out of his pocket, he put them on the car seat next to her. Then, after ordering Bozo to stay next to the Expedition, Dan walked back to the Blazer.

He skirted around the outside of it, finding in the process that all four windows were rolled down, so it seemed likely that the vehicle’s AC wasn’t working. Examining the dust just outside the rear passenger door, he saw the set of barefoot tracks Angie had left behind after she had climbed out of the vehicle to go in search of her mother and found her “sleeping.” Remembering the child’s innocent words made Dan’s heart hurt.